Computer Tip of the Day: Password Protection

One of the most important things to make sure you do when browsing the web or even just using your computer in general, is to make sure your passwords are as secure as possible in order to keep your data safe from hackers and keep your accounts secure from various kinds of attacks on your accounts and personal information.

What many people don’t seem to realize is that there are a number of different ways to get hacked that can be easily avoided by users, in theory. The most common methods currently used to try and break into your accounts are dictionary attacks, cracking security questions and social engineering. In addition, many people making hacking their accounts easier on hackers by setting extremely simple passwords which can be easily guessed or using the exact same password for multiple accounts.

Dictionary Attacks

Dictionary attacks are when a hacker figures out your password by trying a massive number of different options one after another until they manage to break into your account through repeated attempts. The primary method of avoiding having your account broken into like this is to is to avoid things like spelling words backward, common dictionary words and consecutive combinations of letters like qwerty, asdf and so on.

Breaking Security Questions

Quite a few people use common words or names like their first name, their pet’s name or their place of work as answers to their security questions and all of these things are extremely straightforward to figure out with a bit of research. You can easily make these questions much harder to figure out just by making the answers to your security questions something a lot harder to figure out as well as making them things that a potential hacker couldn’t find just by browsing your Facebook page.

Social Engineering

This is a fancy term for elaborate lies and it is an alternative to standard hacking. Social Engineering is where a hacker attempts to manipulate you into revealing certain pieces of confidential information like their email password or social security number.

Reusing Passwords

Using the same password on multiple occasions is generally not the best idea as it does make hacking you much easier. It also exposes multiple accounts to being hacked simultaneously as breaking the password on one account will allow a hacker access to every single account that uses that password.